300 Rocks!!!

300, one of the most visually-stunning movie of this year had graced our shores on Thursday night and yours truly was lucky enough to catch the movie last weekend. For you see, my husband and I, along with our bunch of friends had been waiting in bated-breath for the movie ever since we saw the trailer in the cinema. He, for the violent cool factor of the show and me, just because I'm a sucker for anything Greek-related.

The story tells of King Leonidas, who had a tendency to bare this teeth for all the world to see when he speaks and litters his sentences with liberal amounts of exclamation marks, who was forced to take a 'stroll' with 300 of his beefy 'bodyguards' when the jewelry-and-make-up-wearing Persian God-King Xerxes threatens his beloved Sparta because Spartan politics and religion would not allow him to start a war during some sacred ceremonial month.

"You mean there is a pile of bodies somewhere in this picture and not just a bunch of bootylicious, scalding hell-temperature HOT half-naked men?"

So what we get is an excellent adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel into a copper-toned, fantasy-like realm where all the men are tough, rough and buffed. If you are not born with boobs then you better make damn well sure that you are either a man's man, alpha male Spartan or you are souvenir to the Grim Reaper before your first diaper change. After all, to quote the King, ‘THIS! IS! SPARTA!!!’.

I was really reeling myself for a squirm and squeal session for most part of the movie as I'm not really into gore and violence but pleasantly surprised myself but sitting through the show wide-eyed and thoroughly enjoying the slash-stab-kill action without so much as a blink. Watching the half-naked men in action actually makes me wanna kill a certain middle-aged biatch at work Spartan-style. Tonight you dine in hell!!! Grr!!!

"You want a piece of me?!!!"

There was a few scene that made me laugh out loud though and I heard the guy behind me commenting, 'Weird people'. I'm very sure he directed that comment at the near-psychotic, death-numb Spartan warriors and not me. Watch out for the light hearted moments courtesy of a spinning decapitated head, some elephants, an apple, a goat and an eye. Trust me, I've not gone mad as yet.

So all in all, I would say this one is definitely a winner and worth the money and time spent in the darkened cinema hall provided that you are not trying to hard to make it politically or historically-correct. Just enjoy the movie for the cool factor and you will come out from the cinema a very satisfied person and perhaps rushing to sign up that long overdue gym membership.

Movie Review - Ghostrider

Call me stubborn or hard-headed but I just had to watch a movie to decide for myself even if the majority of reviews give a movie a bad rap. That is just what happened with Ghostrider (or 'Penunggang Motosikal' according to the Malay subtitle) recently.

Now, I've got a bad feeling already when I saw that Nicholas Cage was taking the lead in the movie. I mean common, the old man is balding! How convincing can he be as a bad ass biker? They should have just stick to the gorgeous young bloke playing the young Johnny Blaze for the rest of the movie. He is yummylicious. This way, even if the movie sucks, which it did BIG time, then at least the girls in the house still get an eye candy to drool over while the guys slobber over Eva Mendes's booming asset. Now when I say boom, I really meant 'explode'. Just watch the movie and you'll know what I mean, you pervert.

Anyhow, other than bad casting (Nicholas Cage is just SO wrong for the part. Heck, even the old Ghostrider looks way much cooler.), there's also the bad posturing from Nic. There's this one pose with the fore finger pointing at the bad guys with the rest of the fingers curled back awkwardly that just had me laughing out loud in the cinema. It's just such an insanely dumb pose to strike. I wonder if Nicky boy came up with that on his own or the director who incidentally also helmed the flopped efforts in Daredevil and Elektra did. I'm seeing a trend here.

Now, I'm not much of a comic-book person but even I know the storyline in the movie wasn't the same as those in the comics. Worse still, there is zilch action in the movie other than some fleeting moments of a burning skull on a cool burning bike. The bad guys dropped like flies. One word to describe them, pathetic with a capital 'P'. I'm totally disgusted.

So, my 2 cents worth of review here is this is a big waste of time. I sincerely believe a few of my excellent brain cells would have lasted that much longer had I not subjected them to the show.